Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena, Colombia, is one of the most beautiful cities on one of the most spectacularly beautiful bits of coastline I have seen anywhere in the world.

Its a really old colonial city and testiment to the many attacks on it over the years by pirates and other invaders, it has huge stone walls constructed all around it. Nearby the little towns of Santa Marta and Taganga are really beautiful also. There is quite good diving off Taganga as well - very warm water, 31 degrees celsius when i was diving there, and great visibility. Some of the most impossibly blue water I have seen anywhere in the world.

Colombia is also very cheap and is safe enough if you use some common sense and dont flash around how much money you have or that you are American! Both of these things was not a problem for me to pull off. There is, however, a bit of an edgy feel to being in Colombia and while this might be OK for some, it might spoil this beautiful country for others.

Colombia is definitely a beautiful place that it is also wild and crazy. Colombians are pretty cool people too. The people there are so aware of the danger they live in everyday but are weirdly ignorant of it too. Their life revolves very much around the 3 F's: family, fiesta and football!

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